#NeverTrump scared Donald Trump out of CPAC. Will it matter?

With Donald Trump’s cowardly decision to bail on the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the excuses for his running & hiding with short notice have been epic. Most often, and in spite of the fact that Trump himself has not confirmed it, the reason cited is that he would’ve been foolish to go into the lion’s den with so much obvious opposition ready to pounce.

Indeed, Liz Mair had been working with several #NeverTrump supporters, the hashtag which represents the opposition to a sociopathic nominee representing the GOP, to protest his speech with as many as 50 activists.

“I’m personally very gratified that a guy with mostly the same issue positions as Hillary Clinton, whose record is defined by business failures and screwing over exactly the kind of people he’s now treating as his base, will not be speaking at CPAC or getting what many people would treat as a de facto ‘conservative’ stamp of approval by virtue of speaking there,” said Liz Mair, President of Mair Strategies and founder of the anti-Trump Super PAC, Make America Awesome.

“For the record, we had potentially up to 50 people who were prepared to engage in some pretty significant disruption in a very media-focused and attention-grabbing way,” explained Mair in the statement to EveryJoe. “And for two days now, we’ve had tons of people walking around CPAC wearing our orange ribbon stickers, to signify opposition to Trump, which I’ve heard at least one person on his team was all upset about (as well as the rumors of our protest). This is just further evidence that Trump is a gigantic whiny, wuss of a human being who can’t take an ounce of what he dishes out by the pound on a daily basis. But like I said, I’m glad he won’t be speaking to this very high-profile conservative gathering, bottomline.”

I was part of the conversations leading up to the planned protest as well, and can assure you we would have been quite the headache for the candidate. However, no greater or worse than what he would face in the general elections and frankly, if he can’t handle the base – the real base, not this white nationalist movement that has set up shop in the Republican tent – then he has no chance of winning the general election.

But all this being said, does skipping CPAC hurt him? Probably not. His base of support is not rooted in traditional conservatism activism and every time he thumbs his nose at anyone, his adoring fans scream with orgasmic delight. So while it felt good to laugh at his obvious cowardice to take questions from people that disagree with him, the way to beat him remains the same: we have to start looking towards who the anti-Trump movement can coalesce around to put an end to this madness.

As Erick Erickson said, we need to unite or die. Increasingly, it appears “Victory or Death” has made a distorted comeback in which all of the remaining non-Trump candidate refuse to accept any outcome that doesn’t involve their name at the top of the ticket. Victory for them or death of the GOP. Maybe even conservatism itself.